MIND DE-CODER 113
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Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was.
John Lennon
THE BLACK WATCH WHEN YOU FIND FOREVER
Check out that title. WEIRD ROOMS, the current release from L.A.-based The Black Watch, is sequenced to be listened to in one heightened setting - with When You Find Forever, the album’s opening track, I give you precisely 31 seconds and I exhort you to check out the rest of this remarkable release immediately.
THE RASCALS INTRO-EASY ROLLIN’
As The Young Rascals they were responsible for the chilled-out soulful single Groovin’, which was a huge hit in the summer of 1967. By 1968 they were The Rascals, and their fourth album, ONCE UPON A DREAM, showcases a gleeful embrace of LSD. I’m no great fan of their earlier work, but this is a gem of an album, full of experimental flourishes which seamlessly integrate elements of jazz and psychedelia into the quartet's sound, along with adventurous arrangements and introspective, philosophical lyrics.
PETER DALTREY IN THE TIME OF TREES
Peter Daltrey, one time singer and chief songwriter for legendary 60s psychedelic band Kaleidoscope (the English version, although the American version were not to be sniffed at) has recently released his 26th solo album, THE LEOPARD AND THE LAMB - a psychedelic deep dive through the looking glass, combining 60s vibes with (no doubt) hard won cosmic wisdom. In The Time Of Trees is the perfect soundtrack for your next existential crisis or tea party.
THE SHIVER HEY MR HOLY MAN
The Shiver were that rarest of things - a Swiss psychedelic rock band. I’ve never given it much thought before, but if you’d have asked me, I would have suggested that Switzerland is exactly the sort of country that the 60s most probably by-passed altogether, but it turns out that The Shiver were known as one of the most legendary (and mysterious) Swiss psychedelic quintets of that inestimable age. Hey Mr Holy Man, which very much seems to be based on that old Gregorian chant Dies Irae, is taken from the band’s only album WALPURGIS, released in 1969. It charts that exact moment when prog began to emerge beneath the paisley sheets of psychedelia - the creepy ethereal mix of organs, hazy percussive drive and dueling aspects of spaced out choral vocal utterances with spoken narration and a groovy free flowing melodic groove is the best track on the album and one of the highlights of all acid rock of the era. (The album’s cover features the first album cover work of legendary surrealist painter H.R. GIGER, fact fans.)
PICTUREBOX CONSIDERATE CONSTRUCTORS/THE STORY OF BISCUIT MAN
Two short tracks from the Canterbury-based Picturebox, a band who exist on the same sort of spectrum as Blur at their most Syd Barrett-est and Dan Treacy’s Television Personalities, with just a bit of XTC thrown in for good measure. They really are that good. Their most recent album, MOBILE DISCO, released earlier this year, features songs about girls, animals, mobile discos and how a bag of 10p’s won’t get you anywhere these days. Charming.
RIVAL SELF MANIFEST
Manifest is the opening track from DJ/producer/turntable musician and cassette looper Rival Self’s eponymous debut LP, released last year but still getting regular plays here at Mind De-Coder Heights. It pretty much lays out the stall for what to expect from the rest of the album - a meticulously detailed field trip through an immersive soundscape that encapsulates the spirit of early Shadow, psychedelia and jazz for the art loving crate digger.
BROADCAST I WANT TO BE FINE
I think I said in my last show that with the release of SPELL BLANKET, it was time to let Trish Keenan return to the ether from whence she came, but since then Warp Records have released a collection of early demos of songs that would subsequently appear as finished productions on the albums HA HA SOUND, TENDER BUTTONS and THE FUTURE CRAYON and that promises to be that. In that spirit I just wanted to include I Want To Be Fine from SPELL BLANKET, because I find it, well, spell binding.
GER EATON SEASON CHANGES
Ger Eaton (pronounced ‘Jair’, just in case you were wondering) - multi-Instrumentalist, Songwriter, Hair Stylist and Retro-Vintage Aficionado - is most recently known as keyboardist/guitarist for Dublin alt-rock heroes The Pale, although he’s been something of a mainstay of the Irish music scene for many years as a member of Premonition, Las Vegas Basement, Les Marionettes, Pugwash, The Carnival Brothers and many solo and collaborative recordings besides. That being said, I only came across him following the release of his most recent single, Season Changes, released earlier this year, a song inspired by a late night viewing of folk-horror classic The Wicker Man, but I find myself drawn, inexorably, to it.
BEAUTIFY JUNKYARDS SISTER MOON
The haunting Sister Moon is a collaboration between Lisbon’s Beautify Junkyards and Paul Weller, taken from their most recent album, NOVA, released on the Ghostbox label, home to all things hauntological. It’s a surprisingly good fit - Weller had a recent flirtation with hauntology, and Beautify Junkyards mix of Tropicalia and acid folk has taken an increasingly hauntological bent, especially in this instance where the group apply analogue synths to their wyrd/psych mix to create something disquietingly atmospheric. Weller provides vocals and guitar, while the band create an electronic landscape that sits somewhere between White Noise, Piero Umiliani, Mort Garson and Broadcast. Distinctly marvellous.
MAGICK BROTHER AND MYSTIC SISTER THE EMPRESS
Gorgeous, pastoral acid-folk from Barcelona’s Magick Brother and Mystic Sister. Their most recent release, TAROT, PT. 1, looks to a deck of Major Arcana Tarot cards for inspiration, through which they weave a phantasmagorical journey through the outer realms of space-prog, cosmic jazz, krautrock and magical folk. It’s a truly trippy experience - exotic percussion, flute, cosmic and sitar sounds abide, inviting the listener to take a deep dive. The album is released in two parts, with the first part becoming available earlier this year, giving the listener more time to meditate on music and the universe of Tarot. When the second album is released, the two records are designed to be combined, with the interior gatefolds forming an astrological mandala - frankly there’s not enough of this sort of thing going on these days and they are to be lauded.
OBERON NOTTAMUN TOWN
This dreamy, plaintive rendition of the American folk traditional Nottamun Town, was covered by Oberon, then a septet of teenage students at Oxford's Radley College, in 1971, for their only album, A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM. Recorded in a vacant classroom at the beginning of their school holiday, the album has taken on the status of a cult classic, possibly because it was limited to a privately-pressed run of just 99 copies. It’s very much of its time - a fascinating dropped stitch in the fabric of the early Seventies underground folk cosmology - but when it’s this enchanting, it provides everything you need.
JULIAN COPE R. IN THE HOOD
On which Julian Cope channels the spirit
of Robin Hood through The Sweet’s 1975 release Action (We All Want A Piece
Of The Action) in order to question the very nature of peace (or does he
mean piece?) itself. R. In The Hood, all garage-fuzz dub, is
taken from his most recent release FRIAR TUCK, an album of 12 brand new humdingers: all hummable and lyrically
compelling and replete with wah-acoustic guitars and beautiful orchestrations
of Mellotron 400 from Liverpool’s Blondest.
THE DEEP SHADOWS ON THE WALL
There’s some debate regarding which band first used the term ‘psychedelic’. The 13th Floor Elevators and The Blues Magoos are oft mentioned, of course, as are The Holy Modal Rounders, but may I add to the mix The Deep, who’s album, PSYCHEDELIC MOODS, released in 1966, purports to be the first album that musically replicated the experience an individual was exposed to while under the influence of LSD. It’s something of a curio, and given that it was recorded by studio musicians (reportedly on acid), it has the aura of a cynical studio cash-in about it, despite the fact it was released a year before psychedelic music hit the mainstream. Nevertheless, the resulting sound, achieved with weird sound effects, haunting vocals, sexual moans and acid-soaked lyrics, is well worth a listen if you’re a fan of this sort of thing (and I assume you are.) I should mention at this point that the actual first mention of LSD on a rock record was the Gamblers' 1960 surf instrumental LSD 25, so now you know.
THE SMITHS HOW SOON IS NOW
I had to play this at some point, I just can’t believe it took this long. Deeply immersive, sonically ambitious, swirling, lysergic, transcendent. This being Mind De-Coder I decided to play the ultra-rare unfinished studio out-take that found it’s way onto the Italian-only release of William, It Was Really Nothing, released in 1985. The story goes, Rough Trade sent the incorrect master for the b-side to Virgin in Italy. The mistake was not discovered until copies were delivered to the stores, with a rough estimate of just 100 known copies to have escaped into the hands of collectors before it was swiftly withdrawn. (I wasn’t one of them, btw.) It’s not quite as good as the version with which you’re familiar, but if the definition of psychedelic music is that it discombobulates the senses, then stick around until the end.
THE ATTACK LADY ORANGE PEEL
Inhabiting a region of the sonic solar system somewhere between the Creation and the Small Faces, The Attack languished in comparative obscurity back in the day - their four singles failing to crack the charts was more down to bad luck and record company incompetence than any shortcomings on the band’s part. These days they’re considered one of the finest examples of freakbeat, although the hazily langourous Lady Orange Peel, the b-side to their final single Neville Thumbcatch, released in 1968, shows just how much that scene (it wasn’t really a scene so much the more obscure, hard-edged bands of that era that failed to make a mark on the listening public) was prepared to dip its toe into the limpid pools of psychedelia.
ANDRE 3000 GHANDI, DALAI LAMA, AND YOUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JC -
BUNDY, JEFFREY DAHMER, AND JOHN WAYNE GACY
An album of devotional mediations influenced by spiritual jazz musicians and minimalist composers is possibly the last thing we expected from Andre 3000 (Andre Lauren Benjamin to his mum) or even this show, but what can I tell you? Light a candle, smoke a joint, put it on while taking a bath, and drift away. You may have thought that experimental flute music is not your thing (or possibly thang) and I expect that, on the whole, you’d be right, but set and setting is everything, and NEW BLUE SUN, released last year, is a sublime listen, frequently beautiful and spiritually uplifting to boot. He spelt Gandhi wrong, by the way.
KLAUS SCHULTZE MINDPHASER
I guess the same can be said of krautrock legend, Klaus Schultze. I have to pick my moment to enjoy his electronic improvisations, but get the timing right - dusk works for me, it’s when I’m at my most contemplative - and I can be quite receptive to some pulsating synths. Mindphaser is taken from his 1976 release MOONDAWN. I’ve only played an excerpt because the original track runs to some 25 minutes and takes up all of side 2 of the album. Not that I’m opposed to playing 25 minute tracks on the show, of course, but about halfway through this track it goes off on something of a tangent, and I thought, well, if you’re going to go off on something of a tangent, then let’s play something by…
FAUST ZWÖLF METER UNTER DER OBERFLÄCHE/I AM…AN ARTIST
My love for krautrock was first and foremost formented through Faust, most memorably THE FAUST TAPES, which pretty much changed the way I thought about music forever. Zwölf Meter Unter Der Oberfläche (or Twelve Metres Below The Surface, Google Translate fans) is Faust at their most Faust-iest, a disorienting experiment in tape-splicing innovation that is almost entirely discombobulating in nature. It’s taken from the album MOMENTAUFNAHME III, a collection of snapshots gathered from their legendary 1970s recordings (although some of these recordings also appear on 2001’s BBC SESSIONS+ where this track is titled 360) released earlier this year. By contrast, the delicate I Am…An Artist is taken from the album MOMENTAUFNAHME II, released in 2023, one of two albums that collects together music recorded between 1971 and 1974 in a similar vein to the way in which THE FAUST TAPES was assembled - which is to say, they contain a montage of minimal electronic pulses, ambient dreamscapes, vocal collages to heavy drone, ritualistic percussion and psychedelic grooves that provide a very good introduction to the band should you be in anyway interested.
SOFT HEARTED SCIENTISTS PHANTOM OF CANTON
Hot off the press, and available to buy for three days only, Phantom Of Canton gives us a taste of the new album from Welsh wizards Soft Hearted Scientists, who are in the process of recording it now with a release date pencilled in for 2025. The song captures the band whimsically reflecting upon life beneath a lysergic haze of vintage instruments and beautiful harmonies. It bodes well.
JOHNNY ALMOND MUSIC MACHINE VOODOO FOREST
The eminently strange Voodoo Forest is taken from the album PATENT PENDING, released in 1969 by the acclaimed saxophonist and woodwind player Johnny Almond. It’s a classic of its kind, capturing that emerging mix of jazz blues and rock that would create that special Brit sound of the era - the whole album could be used as a soundtrack to an Austin Powers movie. Almond earned his chops playing with the likes John Mayall, Zoot Money, Alan Price and Chicken Shack, before he formed his own group in 1969. He was an outstanding multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger, equally at home as a producer where he treated the studio as an instrument in the same way as George Martin or, now I come to think of it, Carlos Esquivel. In fact, posit him somewhere between the two and you won’t go far wrong with this album.
BLACK CAT BONES FEELIN’ GOOD
I’m no great fan of your blues-rock, me, but only a hard-hearted villain could take issue with this track, recorded by a post-Paul Kossoff Black Cat Bones for their only LP, 1969’s BARB WIRE SANDWICH (which, let’s face it, sounds like a Spinal Tap album from more or less the same period.) Although the album was known for its hard rocking blues, Feelin’ Good was written by the legendary Anthony Newely for the 1964 production of the musical ‘The Roar Of The Greasepaint - The Smell Of The Crowd.’ Black Cat Bones, purveyors of your raw progressive blues, make it all about the sentiment, and the sentiment is all about feelin’ good.
MAYA ONGAKU PILLOW SONG
Japan’s Maya Ongaku combine a sublime mix of psychedelia, folk and jazz, very much in tune with, and encapsulating, the essence of the trio’s sleepy native island of Enoshima. Their debut album, APPROACH TO ANIMA, released last year contains chiming guitars and ethereal vocals, languid basslines and woodwind and percussion, all of which converge to create a sonic experience that helps you transcend whatever physical environment you might find yourself in. Pillow Song is perfectly idyllic. Until that bit at the end. Which I really like.
